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Supratek Owners Thread

Greetings All - 
It appears that the 26-million-plus view, multi-decade "Preamp Deal of the Century" Supratek thread has been removed. I'm not sure why, but suppose there must be a reasonable explanation.
In any case, on that thread I recently asked whether there might be interest in a "Supratek owners thread" and received some interest. 
The purpose of this thread is for Supratek owners to share the details of their system, ask questions, share information about any tube-rolling they have done, and so forth.
I'll kick us off here with a few details about my system -
ancient Linn LP12 with Ittok arm, Dynavector 17D3 cartridge into Cortese LCR phono stage
Power amp is a fully serviced Innersound Electrostatic amplifier
Quad ESL63 speakers (not USA monitors) or JBL 4430 studio monitors
Digital sources are immature and evolving - ancient Fostex CR300 cd player/burner
DacMagic 100 DAC
Nordost Blue Heaven 75ohm interconnect
Due to the fairly long lengths of speaker wire required in the new listening room, speaker wire is Belden 12 gauge wire designed for low-voltage outdoor lighting systems. 
Next steps - dedicated circuit, new power cords, new interconnects, new wires.
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tksteingraber's avatar
tksteingraber
624 posts
 

@jslateiv question for you on my 6 month old Cab volume control.  Whenever I use the remote volume up or down I get a crackling  sound. If I turn the volume knob up and down a few times it goes away but returns next time it’s turned on.  Should this be of concern?  Thanks for your expertise.  

 

tksteingraber's avatar
tksteingraber
624 posts
 

@rms456 excellent to hear about your new arrival🤣. Once it breaks in and if you have an interest in upgrading your tubes I have several suggestions that made a definite improvement. I have rolled many 6sn7’s, 6f8g’s , 6l6’s as well as 5V rectifiers. Also, highly recommend upgrading your fuse to a Swiss Fuse Box. All nice SQ enhancements. Cheers!

jslateiv
64 posts
 

@tksteingraber   You will hear a little crackling when the remote is used due to the motor interacting with the high gain circuit.  You should only hear it while the motor is turning the vol up or down (remote) though.  Should stop once you take your finger off that remote button.    Sometimes if you have a cell phone near (~3') of the pre,  the pre will pickup some rf from the phone and you could hear some cadenced ticking and or a little static in the background.    IF you hear/get the crackling from the volume when manually engaging the control at the unit, I would suspect a dirty pot,  but these are sealed so not much you could do about it other than replace.   If it's silent other than when turning up/down manually,  I would worry with it. Won't harm anything.

tksteingraber's avatar
tksteingraber
624 posts
 

@jslateiv many thanks for the excellent explanation.  All good…the Cab only makes noise using the remote.

rms456
46 posts
 

@jslateiv , there is a difference now on the burning in process, now 48 hours in. An FM Tuner (Yamaha TD-500) is feeding the input and monitoring with SPL headphone amp, HD820. Power is raw house AC power, no special cabling on AC lines at all. Interconnects are Accuphase ASL-10B, AL-10 well used.

If the source is ordinary and it sounds 'better' as time goes on, that roughness out of the box is slowly disappearing.

What I mean by rough, is dropping sound stage height and missing the stage between centre and left and right, falls in a hole there as encountered in the main system. The effect on an equivalent digital only level, is closely the same as the change in USB cables. Guessing that common mode noise is an issue there. Bass is lost in the early hours, but is coming back. 

The manual that came with the Cabernet advised the GZ345 was good only for 2000 hours. Could you recommend another tube with longer life and an SQ boost.as a bonus?

 

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